Brutal cold grips much of nation

Sophia Annas, 3, puts the finishing touch on her snowman Tuesday in Mount Diablo State Park in the San Francisco Bay area.

Students went home for a snow day, stranded travelers waited at airports and drivers slid across icy roads in the second day of a bitter cold wave that blanketed much of the nation Tuesday.

There was little relief in sight. Temperatures were forecast to drop below zero today in at least 12 states in the Midwest and West. A band of snow and sleet fell Tuesday from Minnesota to New Hampshire.

Dozens of schools closed in Kentucky, Arkansas and Tennessee, and some school districts in Illinois sent students home early Tuesday. Up to a half-foot of snow had fallen in parts of Kentucky.

"It's pretty treacherous," said Jodi Shacklette, a Kentucky State Police dispatcher in Elizabethtown. "We're working wrecks just left and right."

More than 300 flights were canceled at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport and about 50 were canceled at Midway Airport, said Department of Aviation spokesman Gregg Cunningham.

Some of the sharpest cold Tuesday was in northern Minnesota, where Hibbing bottomed out at 32 below zero and International Falls dropped to 28 below.

Winter weather advisories were in effect across the Midwest and from Texas to New England, where utilities were still repairing power lines snapped by last week's devastating ice storm.

The cold wave and storms that accompanied it have been blamed for at least 20 deaths, including 11 in traffic accidents.